


(Not Bitter)Sweet Fall

by AllotropicBi



Series: The Lord of the Onion Ring [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Autumn, Fluff, M/M, This is mega fluff, central part, gay kissing, steve is the type of writer that thinks too hard sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 09:58:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6951766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllotropicBi/pseuds/AllotropicBi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Steeeeeeve,” Bucky whines, nuzzling Steve’s shoulder and trying to distract him. “Your writing is depressing me right now. Stop hating on nature.” </p><p>“I’m not hating on nature,” Steve says sternly, as if it should be obvious (which it really is). “I’m arguing on behalf of it.”</p><p>“Just… Stop writing for a bit. You know I love it, Stevie, but you gotta take a break. Look where we are.” </p><p>Steve snorts. “Central Park? The epitome of everything I was just writing? A patch of grass with some trees surrounded on all four sides by boundless blocks of concrete?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Not Bitter)Sweet Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Tis I coming back from the grave of not writing!!! I am giving y'all this because I had it written a long time ago, as inspired by a conversation with my pal Fen (kaijucorps on tumblr). 
> 
> ALSO, important PSA: to any artists participating in the Stucky Big Bang that by some miracle might be reading this, I have a fic up for claims in the third round! I was a bit slow to submit my summary and also to put the word out, but if you're interested in working with me, my fic is called The Flip Side... keep an eye out for the 3rd round of claims.

_Nature: man’s biggest illusion. Walk around for five minutes anywhere, inside or out, and you’ll catch a glimpse of what I mean. Inside there are potted plants, caged in by concrete walls and nourished by the meagre sunlight that leaks through the slats of dusty blinds. Outside, take a few miles and count how many trees you see, and compare it to the amount of buildings. How does that ratio seem fair? Hard to believe there was a time that the earth existed without any of this, where there was nothing but pure land._

_I’m not saying we should go cold turkey; we shouldn’t drop everything and walk off into the woods. What little is left ought to be protected from our wrath, our infection. What would we do with it anyway? Anything that we’ve not already done to the areas we’ve already claimed? People live off the land, but all that, the need to get better at doing it, is what got us here in the first place. So protect what is left, don’t let us taint that._

_Isn’t that a funny idea? National parks, reserves, forest protection programs. Instead of the land sheltering us, we’re sheltering the land, and from who? Ourselves. Nature used to run wild and rampant, owning everything in its wake, but then we came along and reduced it to rare experiences that you have to travel hours to experience without the reminder that it’s all an illusion._

_Even in the most remote places – the Amazon, the Himalayas, when you go out camping beneath the stars to ‘rough it,’ or the tiniest islands scattered across the ocean – almost everyone knows they’ll be headed back home to a place where there is heat, television, freezer food, internet, and security (which is its own illusion to be discussed another time). You escape for a short period of time, even if it’s a year or more, you will return in some way to what we have created._

_There’s nothing wrong with it. Without technological advancements and everything the centuries have brought us, we probably wouldn’t even be alive, but it’s strange to imagine a time where that wasn’t the norm. Having a house, maybe, but not relinquishing yourself from all your arguably mind-numbing indulgences just to immerse in them the second you return from your adventurous endeavour._

_For some reason, this all makes me think of the Great West. Back in the days, you know? Cowboys, sheriffs, all the stereotypical stuff that glorifies Americans leeching off of other peoples’ land. Even with their recreational activities, their drinking and all, the land still beat them. Before cars there was limited travel, less pollution, less roads, ultimately meaning that nature was still dominant._

_Nature used to be so powerful. It still is, undoubtedly; natural disasters happen all the time. But it used to_ own _everything, and now we spend our lives trying to tame it. We ruin it, and we try to repair it, to control it. What gave us the resources to thrive is dwindling down to precious, endangered, fenced off areas that require a toll for you to experience its beauty._

 _This is nothing like how the_ Homo sapiens _have come out on top of all the sister species. If you think of it that way there’s the huge, obnoxious, self-indulgent assumption that humans won’t just die out too, only to be replaced by another race better adapted for the raw, nature deprived land that we’re paving for them. It’s entirely possible if one considers the timeline of evolution, and how all preceding species to us_ _spent as much time roaming the earth as we, if not plenty more._

_No, this is nothing like that. Nature itself, the richness of its resources, is not an expendable species. Once it’s gone you cannot recover it, you cannot replace it with something new and improved. Because nature encompasses everything that keeps the breath in any living creature. As soon as you remove that, there’s nothing left to nourish earth’s inhabitants. Maybe the cockroaches will take over. Maybe we will adapt a new species that can live on the bare minimum – but don’t expect nature to make the mistake of letting humans, or human derivatives, survive._

_If anything survives, it will be small. Things that use so little that nature can restore itself once we’ve all died and stopped sucking the life from it. Then will another human-like species come into existence, only to make the same mistakes we have? Or will they be better? Will they evolve a society like ours, one of their own, or nothing coherent at all? Will they discriminate, be unjust, immoral, or_

“Steeeeeeve,” Bucky whines, nuzzling Steve’s shoulder and trying to distract him. “Your writing is depressing me right now. Stop hating on nature.”

“I’m not hating on nature,” Steve says sternly, as if it should be obvious (which it really is). “I’m arguing on behalf of it.”

“Yeah, and getting into the boring side of things like how another species might fuck up the earth and its own race by doing the same shit we’ve done. You want to relive all of human history by writing out the rest of this?”

Steve scowls, but he can’t hide the fondness he feels when Bucky slips an arm around his waist and tugs him closer.

“Just… Stop writing for a bit. You know I love it, Stevie, but you gotta take a break. Look where we are.”

Steve snorts. “Central Park? The epitome of everything I was just writing? A patch of grass with some trees surrounded on all four sides by boundless blocks of concrete?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and saves Steve’s work before shutting the lid of his laptop and putting it aside on their picnic blanket. “Yeah, fine, I get what you mean, but. Be romantic with me for a minute, Stevie. I know you got it in you,” he says, the lilt in his voice patronizing in a way that’s blatantly teasing his boyfriend.

Steve huffs, but he complies same as always and turns towards Bucky, the leaves from the oak tree they’re sitting beneath crunching under his shifting weight. It’s the height of autumn and Central Park looks like a dream. What’s got Steve’s attention now, though, is the way the colours surrounding them give Bucky a soft, warm glow. They picked a relatively secluded spot. It took a while to find, but Bucky knows the best places that people hardly venture into.

So now here they are, looking into each other’s eyes as sappy as can be with the warmth of the season wrapping around them, too warm for the breeze making Bucky’s hair flutter to be chilling.

Steve brings a hand to Bucky’s jaw and presses a soft kiss to his lips. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers, albeit shyly, when he pulls back. Bucky grins.

“Aw shucks, friend, I think you’re pretty swell yourself!” he says cheerfully. Steve whines through his laugh. Despite the initial teasing, Bucky falls back into the light kisses. He’s such a sucker for romance, and if kissing languidly under a lush oak slowly letting loose its golden leaves is how they choose to take that on, Bucky is more than pleased by it.

Steve brings a second hand to the back of Bucky’s neck and coaxes him to deepen the kisses.

The first time a leaf falls onto Steve’s head, Steve pulls back with the cutest little chuckle and Bucky’s heart swells. Once the leaf is removed, they’re right back at it, the innocent passion of their love for each other driving them to keep going. Bucky can’t get enough of it: feeling Steve pressed up to him, having the light touches and sincere kisses that reduce him to a breathless pile of affection.

The breeze brushes past them, and a leaf finds its way to Bucky’s cheek, making him whine in frustration against Steve’s mouth. Steve laughs, and the sound runs through Bucky’s whole being, extending outwards into his consciousness and taking over so it’s all that he knows. Bucky sighs contentedly into Steve’s mouth, and Steve breaks off for a moment to watch Bucky with fondness in his eyes so obvious that Bucky finds it hard to breathe.

In all their intimacy of indulging in the presence of each other, another leaf somehow sneaks its way into the space between them and Bucky whines, scrunching his nose with disapproval. Steve thinks it’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen. He can’t stop himself from ducking forward to kiss Bucky’s nose, which only makes Bucky whine again, in turn making Steve find him _more_ endearing. What a deliciously vicious cycle.

“These leaves suck,” Bucky mutters before catching Steve in another sweet kiss.

“You suck,” Steve retorts. He’s very biased to liking the leaves, especially with all the cute frustrated noises they draw out of Bucky.

“Oh honey, you know I do,” Bucky drawls. Steve laughs and pinches some skin at the back of Bucky’s neck in warning.

“Shut up,” Steve says.

“Make me.”

“Wow,” Steve comments, following it with a scoff. “Real smooth, real original.”

“You love it,” Bucky says, leaning back in to steal another kiss. He vaguely wonders if either of them has been keeping count, then thinks about how stupid that is.

“Mm,” Steve hums against his lips, pulling Bucky down some until they’re lying down and Steve is half on top of him. “You know I do.”

Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s waist and holds him close, and Steve settles for a moment, resting his head on Bucky’s chest.

“I love you,” Bucky whispers, as if it’s some big secret, like they don’t say it as often as they can.

Steve looks up at him and places a kiss on his cheek. “I love you, too.”

And maybe, in this infinite moment, Steve forgets that there is anything outside the confines of this sector of the park and the two of them within it; that there might be any Internet or Netflix to go home to. Right now, nature is in full force, in complete harmony with Steve and Bucky lying together, and suddenly, or maybe as it’s always been, everything is serene and real.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sweet gay cheesy kisses. Cheesy shit. So much cheese.


End file.
